They’ll watch the Sunday morning games between lacing and taping and stretching.

Maybe, depending on how those games on the other side of the country are going, they’ll pay even closer attention than they did last Sunday, when they also needed a morning game being played on the other side of the country to go their way.

The Chargers badly want the Baltimore Ravens and Miami Dolphins to lose, so that they take the field Sunday afternoon knowing they can finally finish a game that matters.

And, sure, should the Chargers be eliminated from playoff contention before their 1:25 p.m. kickoff with the Kansas City Chiefs, there will be disappointment. But not despair. They’ll simply officially be where they figured they were four weeks ago. And it won’t affect how they play.

“Even if (a game) doesn’t matter, I’m not worried about it, because everything does matter,” Philip Rivers said. “It’s a quality this team has had … We’ve always fought to the end, regardless. When people want to make a game meaningless, we’re like, ‘What do you mean? We get to go out there and play with our buddies in an NFL game.’ You’re telling me that doesn’t matter.”

The reason the Chargers have a chance to make the playoffs is because they played like they did even when they thought they didn’t.

“The focus has really ratcheted up the past few weeks,” safety Eric Weddle said. “The older guys really stressed it every practice, every meeting. The younger guys have grabbed hold of it and ran with it.”

Don’t concentrate on what may have been lacking before. This cannot be the first time you are hearing that this so-young, so-new team was learning how to make its way. That’s a big part of the reason the Chargers have lost six games by one score -- allowing moments to consume them, not realizing the everything-matters focus winning requires.

The important thing now is to not lament those shortfalls, but to appreciate that those shortfalls did not define them.

That when the Chargers finally got it together may not have been too late is a testament to their fortitude, yes, but moreover to the group of leaders whose very nature is unrelenting.

Make no mistake, the veterans on this team left Washington seven weeks ago devastated by what they let slip, came home from Miami a couple weeks later all but certain their hopes were completely lost and walked away from their Dec. 1 loss against Cincinnati convinced their season was finished.

“To me, it’s about us having some pride in what we do for a living,” tight end Antonio Gates said after losing to the Bengals. “… It’s about the kind of character we have.”

It’s trite. And true.

For the widespread youth on the remodeled Chargers, there is a vein of resilient longevity, of a certain kind of veteran that has never let this team sink to Raiders depths.

Gates is in his 11th season, and to get play in a number of his 158 regular season games he has endured things done to his body that most people don’t want to even think about being done to other people. We’re talking about long needles and the kind of pain that makes a man scream when the numbness wears off the next day.

Weddle has not left the field for a single defensive play this season and – despite missing three games to injury in 2009 – has played 96 percent of the Chargers’ defensive snaps since becoming a starter in 2008.

Nick Hardwick’s career might have been ended – some people in the know have said “should have been over” – in 2009 when he suffered a severe ankle injury. He missed 13 games, returned that season and is the only offensive lineman to have not missed a game since.

And Rivers … well, the quarterback who may finally be getting the credit he has long deserved has not missed a game since becoming a starter in 2006. His string of 127 regular season starts is the second-longest active streak among NFL quarterbacks. Really, we should have to say nothing more than this about Rivers: ACL-less AFC Championship. But have you also seen him argue for and against calls as if every one of them determined whether he’d ever eat again?

It may not matter to you that the Chargers haven’t made the playoffs in three years yet won three of four to finish 2012, four of five to close out ’11 and three of four to end ’10. But it matters to them.

“I’m not downplaying what’s at stake,” Rivers said. “You play 17 weeks to get a chance to get a bonus week and see if you can get another. But we’re going to fight no matter what.”

That’s the only thing in which we can be confident going into a final day so tensely fraught with unknowns.